Written by Brian McNamara
***contains spoilers***
What an odd point in the history of Doctor Who we find ourselves in. A year after the start to a tumultuous – and very confusing – truncated season, nine months from one of the most well-received episodes of Jodie Whitaker’s era and four months since a tepid Easter special and a full year before the 60th anniversary. I mention these only to point out how out of the blue this particular special feels.
Untethered from a season, not linked to a major holiday. In the early press for the episode it was referred to as the “Centenary special” as it coincides with the BBC’s 100th anniversary. But almost all that identity has seemingly been lost. Indeed, there was barely any excitement or teases – or even an air date – for this episode until just two weeks ago. To then have the episode compete with House of the Dragon for viewers feels even more arbitrary. I saw more than a few tweets mentioning not even knowing the episode was airing last night, not great scenes for a show that just years ago dominated social media and had simulcasts and Fathom events for its episodes.
All of this is to say that Jodie Whittaker is departing the series with as little fanfare as possible. Which is a shame, as her version of the Doctor was full of life and hope. But “Power of the Doctor” brings us a lot of great scenes for Jodie that make the Doctor her own, but it’s a messy, problematic soup at the best of times.
The episode opens with a pretty great set piece of an interstellar train heist. Pushing the bounds of the BBC budget, we get some good hijinks before Dan (John Bishop) just survives being shot in his space helmet. Shaken by the encounter, he leaves the TARDIS 5 minutes into Act 1. He’s also summarily gone from the episode, save for a brief appearance at the end. It’s the first in a series of odd choices.
The Cyber Masters (last seen in the “Timeless Children”) capture a young girl who, it is revealed, is actually a celestial power house that is also a tentacle monster. After dropping off Dan, the Doctor receives a call from a Dalek traitor and sets time to contact them before being interrupted by another call from UNIT. If this setup feels somewhat familiar to viewers, it’s probably because it feels almost exactly like the previous season’s FLUX story arc.
We are treated to the return of Sacha Dawan’s Master, a truly great interpretation of the character and one of the high points of the episode. The Master’s Dalek plan is incredibly convoluted and doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Dawan steals most of his scenes and he hams it up as Rasputin, embodies Matt Smith as a seismologist, plays a twisted mastermind with aplomb and even displays vulnerability when he takes on the Doctor’s shoes (literally) later in the episode. There is a truly wonderful dance sequence that feels painfully out of place but in character that is so on the nose it hurts. (Canonically, the Master does like club hits.)
The Master’s machinations bring The Doctor back into contact with Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) from UNIT and previous companions Teagan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) and Ace (Sophie Allred). Teagan and Ace are the biggest delight of the episode as both feel like they’ve been living their characters for the 30 decades we haven’t seen them on screen. They never miss a beat and look to be having fun. In particular there are two magical moments between each companion and their Doctor that are worth the price of admission alone on this episode.
And then there’s Yaz (Mandip Gil). The show has spent literal seasons telling us how important she is and they’ve hastily tried to make the relationship between Yaz and the Doctor into something more, but it’s just not there. Yaz finally gets to be the center of the episode but she largely doesn’t struggle or overcome anything. She figures out how to fly the TARDIS… just because. She can conjure an image of the Fugitive Doctor who she doesn’t have the connection Ace or Teagan have … just because. Again, all of this can be explained but it just happens to move the plot. Yaz lacks interiority as a character such that there’s no weight to her arc, there’s no investment. In the end, the Doctor just leaves her and she’s okay with it. This could have been a great character beat for. But she just accepts as given. It’s an odd moment in an episode where we’re shown she can rise to any challenge.
You may find I’m dancing around the plot a bit and that’s because the plot is largely a mess. It’s less of a mess than the six-episode Flux story but it’s so very similar that it’s actually frustrating. Instead of trying to foist a 13 episode story into six, producer/writer Chris Chibnall is now packing an entire season into 90 minutes. And the episode only escapes the gravity of all that weight on charm alone. As an example, Vinder (Jacob Anderson), a character from the Flux season, literally crashes into the plot to talk to Yaz for two minutes, hide around a corner, shoot The Master and leave. His role could have been given to anyone … like Dan or a nice return for Ryan or another companion … but instead it’s this complicated addition that doesn’t work if you think about it too long. But then we cut to Ace doing something cool, or another reveal and it all rights itself. There are also some very odd parallels between this episode and Tennant-era episodes “Journey’s End” and “The End of Time.”
Where the episode excels, though, is in the smaller moments. Ace and Tegan each get hero moments and a lovely moment that rounds out their stories (and even ties to some of the media tie-in audios and novels). Ace even gets a canonical reference to her name, Dorothy. The reappearance of Graham (Bradley Walsh) was a nice late cameo even if it strains credulity. Tosin Cole’s Ryan is conspicuously absent from the episode.
When the Doctor meets her previous incarnations in a sort of limbo world, what could have been a very corny call back becomes a really neat connection to the history of the show. Being able to get David Bradley, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann to talk with Whitaker about *being* the Doctor was so well handled. And it gives the episode a core to work from. Getting Jodie to bounce off all these other actors worked so well, too.
There’s a really neat sequence counterposed to the Doctor regenerating that brings together a handful of actors who have been the classic Doctors’ companions for a support group. It’s a really cute sequence and we get neat little character moments from everyone. But it also underscores a very specific feel to the episode. My title above is a joke, but you’d be hard pressed to look at this episode with returning Doctors, returning companions and the Doctor’s three biggest foes and not think it was the 60th anniversary. Clearly Chibnall had ideas and plans for it and decided to just pull it together into this episode because he wouldn’t get to do the real one. That’s not a fault, it probably helped round out the emotional heart of the episode, but it will be odd that this episode, with all its references and nods, aired a month shy of the 59th anniversary.
The episode starts to shake off its messiness about the midpoint when it starts to focus on the end of the Doctor. At the heart of the plot is the Master using all this energy and the Doctor’s biggest enemies to literally become the Master. More hints about the Fugitive Doctor and Timeless Child are dropped in here but the episode is so unconcerned with wrapping that plotline up that the reference feels odd. This leads to some interesting moments, but ultimately Yaz dumps the Master-Doctor on a moon and goes off for other plot elements for 10 minutes. Just strange to set this up and not do anything.
The Doctor herself shines through much of the episode. She gets a lot to do and a lot of scenes and people to play off of her. Her own arc in the episode, acceptance, is pretty well played and a stark contrast to her predecessor. What we do lose is a more dramatic send off for the Doctor. She doesn’t give us a monologue or sum up her role – we get little pieces of this over the episode – but we do get some wonderful shots of her staring at a sunrise while regenerating in one of the nicest shots of the episode. It’s fitting for Jodie and her Doctor, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for her to have something to dig her teeth into a little more.
We’ve known for a while that Ncuti Gatwa would be the next Doctor, and a lot of leaks – perhaps even purposive – have shown that David Tennant would be returning for the three 60th Anniversary specials that will air next year under returning showrunner Russel T. Davies. But the Doctor regenerating into Tennant – including a first-time clothes regeneration – was something of a surprise at the end of this episode. It’s just the right tone to lead us into the next era of Doctor Who.
In the end, ‘Power of the Doctor’ is a very confusing special. It feels rushed and packed with ideas and concepts. It’s literally multiple episodes of content compressed in time. I think it’s a more successful version of Flux but just barely. The plot is whatever, basically. But there are enough key scenes, concepts and send offs to make this a classic episode. I think it’s the perfect symbol of the Chibnall era, a war between cutbacks and constraints and ideas. Long live the Doctor and see you for the 60th.
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